


The Cock o' the North

by AJHall



Series: The Queen of Gondal [15]
Category: Gondal - Bronte children, Life on Mars (UK), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Horse Racing, Teenage Drama, child ballads - Freeform, reivers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 14:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1821346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/pseuds/AJHall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The border between Gondal and Gaaldine is a turbulent land, ruled by blood and feud and whose mailed fist strikes hardest. The five short days of the Pentecost Truce offer the only interval of peace in the Border year. For the first time Charis sits in her mother's place as President of the Truce, and everyone is watching, waiting for her to make a mistake.</p><p>Forbidden love flourishes amid the licence of the truce fair, and no-one is who he -- or, for that matter, she -- seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caulkhead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caulkhead/gifts).



> Most of the inspiration for this work (to the extent not drawn from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) comes from Francis James Child's [English and Scottish Popular Ballads ](http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu//eng/child/index.htm). Readers are advised to take care accordingly.
> 
> Thanks for Caulkhead for betaing and clanwilliam for hoof-picking.

“Pentecost.” Charis placed knife and fork down on their bejewelled case with calculated delicacy. 

The Castellan eyed her. “If you go spearing your tongue on that unnatural Turkish device and die of blood poisoning, I daresay you’ll expect me to grovel to the King, for losing the Crown Princess on my watch. Yes, and to that playacting husband of yours, wherever he’s got to.” 

“Should any such implausible accident occur, you may console Sherlock that at least I was using his own gift at the time.” Her fingertip traced the entwined seed-pearl “S” and “C” device on the side of the case. “Anyway, we were not speaking of forks, but of Pentecost. It approaches hard upon us.” 

The Castellan wiped his own fingers clean of gravy on a bit of bread, ate the bread and pushed back his chair from the table. His bandaged foot stuck out awkwardly on the footstool in front of him. Charis gave it a surreptitious glance. That fractured foot-bone must be healing slower than she had hoped. 

“Why is it,” he enquired, apparently of the dining chamber’s ceiling, “women will use their tongues for anything, but the one thing a man would prefer? Perhaps your grace’s husband was giving your grace a hint.” 

The Castellan should try half an hour alone in the Palace salon with Anthea, or a tough watch at the Lying In Hospital with Sarai, if he thought _those_ tactics could disconcert her. 

“Pentecost,” Charis repeated. “In the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and eighty-nine. A odd-numbered year, you’ll remark.” 

The Castellan snorted. “That’s not the only odd thing about this year.” 

“Agreed.” She smiled, hoping it looked confident and assured. “Which is why we should be chary of breaking with tradition – at least, not if we can help it. So, since it is the turn of Castle Cavron to host the Pentecost Truce, should we not be making preparations?” 

“The Cock o’ the North fair? And what benighted, unbaptised imbecile told you about that one?” He glared down the table at Chris and Ray. They tried to make themselves look unobtrusive, without success. 

“My late mother, Queen Felicia. My earliest memory is of seeing her present the prizes at the Truce tournament.” 

No reason to mention Annie’s jogging Charis’s memory that morning, while they’d been practising single-stick in the old tennis court. 

The table’s centre-piece was a silver-gilt Bacchanalia, crude in several senses of the word. The Castellan reached into its depths, extracted two walnuts, and opened both by twisting one against the other. 

“I might have known. Look, your grace – ma’am – kid – no disrespect to your dear deceased mama, but she did have the armies of Gondal behind her, if anything started kicking off.” 

The Castellan had made the walnut trick look effortless. Doubtless there was a knack to it. Attempting it untutored would make her look like an idiot. She picked up a handful of raisins instead. 

“Mama did not preside over the Pentecost Truce as Queen of Gondal, but in right of her surname. We are the senior landowner on the Northern Border. Since I inherited her dower lands, I also inherited her position as President of the Truce.” 

“Ah!” The Castellan took another swig of wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But as your grace astutely observed, it’s an _odd_ numbered year. It’s the Southern Border’s turn. So your lands – and long may you enjoy them, your grace, which isn’t something you’d hear the Pretender of Gondal say, were you to dine with him – aren’t relevant to the matter at all.” 

“Over my dead body will I dine with the Pretender of Gondal.” 

“And no doubt the same thought has also crossed _his_ mind. You’ll have heard of Sweetmilk Willie Armstrong’s Bridal Feast? They made a song about it, and everything.” 

Charis gulped, relieved she had not attempted the nuts for a _different_ reason. “My father did not care to have the songs of the Borders sung in the Palace.” 

“Too rustic for his grace’s tastes? Well, I’m not proposing to sing –” 

“Your restraint does you credit.” 

The Castellan glared at her. “Back in your great-grandfather’s time, it was. Young Sweetmilk talked the Bell heiress into eloping with him. Only, as luck would have it, on her way to the tryst she walks into a squad of her father’s men, coming back from a raid on Nixon lands and full of stolen Nixon spirt. So they don’t recognise who it is they’ve caught. But, right at the end, the moon comes out from behind a cloud and it shines on her dead face amid the heather. Which, as you can imagine, sobers them all up like nobody’s business.” 

Charis’ fingers tightened round her goblet. The Castellan appeared not to notice. 

“Of course, no-one with the brains of of a half-soused stoat is going to go home to old man Bell to tell them they’d raped and murdered his one ewe lamb. So they came up with a tale.” 

“A tale?” Her voice came out properly indifferent, thank the Virgin. 

“One of the brighter sparks in the whole dim crew had seen the looks the Bell girl and Sweetmilk were chucking at each other last Pentecost fair. So they explain to old man Bell they’d come on the girl dying in the heather, and her last breath was a prayer to be revenged on Sweetmilk and all the Armstrong crew. All nice, tight, and convenient.” 

Charis gritted her teeth and looked the Castellan in the eyes. 

“And so they returned with the body to her father’s tower and he swore them all to secrecy. And Bell sent word to Armstrong’s hall, bidding them all welcome to the Bells’ hall, for the feud had gone on too long and what better to end it than by a feast? So Sweetmilk thought a miracle had come and came with all his men to feast. Never had they tasted so delicate a venison as the flesh of the white doe upon which they dined. And then in came Bell’s cook bearing a great silver platter with a lid on it. ‘Behold,’ said Bell, ‘I have saved the best morsel to the last.’ And there was Janet’s head, sitting on the platter. And while they were paralysed with horror the Bells fell upon them and not a man of the Armstrongs left that place alive.” 

She ran out of breath, and felt herself shivering. She stared into her glass, willing something to happen. Perhaps the ceiling would fall in; in most of these Border castles, that would have been an odds-on bet, but no, not here, not in Castle Cavron. The King had spent thousands of thalers on worked ashlar and German military engineering to make the place fit to withstand the worst Gondal could throw at it. 

But, if not the ceiling collapsing, then an incursion of bandits down the Pass of the Eagles, or an alarm of plague in the little town at the foot of the cliff. 

Anything to prevent her having to face the Castellan’s eyes. 

Liquid swirled eloquently into a glass. 

“Thin stuff, this Angrian piss. Reckon they’ve passed a duff load off on us. I’ll be having a word with the cellarer. Try this, instead.” 

Blindly, she raised the glass he had thrust into her hand and swallowed. Raw fire ran over her tongue and down her throat. 

“Strikes a bit fierce, doesn’t it, the Border spirit?” 

Charis curled her fingers round the stubby glass and, without allowing herself pause for regret, drained the remainder of its contents in one draught. 

She swallowed, hard. Her voice came out at least an octave lower than before. “For centuries my people have held the Pentecost Truce. We will hold it this year, and I shall sit as President in both my titles: head of the Moriarty family to the North and lady of the Warden of the Border Marches to the South.” 

The Castellan paused. Then he rose to his feet, putting most of his weight on the chair back and as little as possible on his bandaged foot. 

“Ray, Chris. Move your arses. We need a race-course cleared and stands run up around it, all the flags out of storage and provisions brought in for five days solid feasting. The lady wants us to hold the Cock o’ the North fair, and – by St Joseph’s divinely-appointed horns – the Cock o’ the North fair will be held.” 

He dropped his voice, so that his final words were audible to the two of them alone. 

“Look, kid, this is only going ahead because you’ve convinced me – against the odds – that you do in fact know the kind of conniving, double-dealing, bloody-handed bastards we’re dealing with here. But listen and learn. I’ve lived in these parts twice as long as you’ve been alive, and _I’m_ still learning. There’s no bottom to the treachery of a reiving lord. And the sweeter they talk and the sweeter they sing and the sweeter they smell – well, the more rottenness they’re concealing. You remember that, your grace, and we may all get out of this with whole skins.” 


	2. Chapter 2

“Oh, Holy St Agatha’s blessed bleeding tits, what do we have here?” 

Charis looked up from the slate in front of her, on which she had been reviewing the proposed rotation for the marshals of the course. 

Out of the throat of the pass, clearly visible from their vantage point on the North Tower, a throng of riders was emerging, pennants flying, their horses garlanded with green leaves in token of peace. 

The Castellan jabbed a forefinger in their direction. “Trouble. The first batch of our Gondalian friends, and judging by their gear and horses that’s no petty lordling, either. One of His Nibs’s chosen few, coming along to get an eyeful of our new defences at close quarters, shouldn’t wonder. How’s your heraldry?” 

She narrowed her eyes. “Not at that dist – Oh!” 

The riders halted. They formed up into fours, their parade-ground slickness suggesting they knew themselves to be observed. A glittering figure on a black charger, self-evidently the commander, rode to the front and turned to face his men. 

At his signal a giant of a man, whose grey horse seemed shrunk to the size of a pony beneath him, trotted to the front of the troop. 

Two dismounted troopers paced forward, bearing a furled standard between them. They saluted the commander and then, with visible effort, handed their burden up to the mounted giant. 

With almost insulting ease, he took it in one hand, raised it above his head, twirled it once round and then brought it down and settled its base in a socket by his saddle. He saluted his commander; had the salute returned and then advanced to the head of the troop. 

All the rest of the troop fell into formation behind him; first at a stately walk, then at a suspended trot. At the very moment when they broke in a canter the giant leant forward, released the standard’s bindings and let it stream forth on the wind. 

Charis caught her breath. A red, mailed foot against a black and white chequered background. But she had never thought to see those arms in Gaaldine. Dreamt, yes – but in dreams which left her half-ashamed, half-exhilarated and which she had vouchsafed to no-one, least of all her confessor. 

The Castellan bore an expression of weary disgust. The arms must be equally familiar to him. “Well, what did I tell you?” 

She held her voice steady with enormous effort. “You believe Lord Lestrade is here to spy out our new defences?” 

He glared at her. “What other purpose could he have?” 

Charis, prudently, made no reply. 

Having consigned the slate to Ray and bade her tiring maid wait on her in her chambers in a turn of the glass, she slipped unobserved down one of the castle’s many stairs to the library. 

It was a scanty, neglected collection of works, moth-eaten and damp-stained. It could hardly have been more suited to her purposes had every single volume been hand-picked. 

She pulled down works of heraldry from the shelf, blushed at a chance mention of “ _sabaton gules, field: chequy sable and argent_ ”, read and re-read the scant paragraph allotted the Lestrade family in _Deeds of the Border Lords_ , traced a finger down rent-returns dotted out in wavering brown ink, recited divides betwixt demenses and countereys on his ancestral lands. She gloried in each grain of information she could winnow out. 

The fragile castle librarian appeared touchingly grateful anyone had ventured into his musty domain. At first, he followed her round, bobbing at her elbow. Then, when he saw the direction of her studies, he vanished into the further reaches of the shelves, re-emerging half-choked with dust, holding out more and yet more crumbling volumes he thought might assist her. 

Annie appeared in the doorway, to signal guests were arriving. Charis repressed the urge to snap with an effort that felt superhuman. How dare Annie intrude at a moment like this, when she was on the verge of important insights? How dare trivial concerns like guests intrude upon her delicious wallowing? 

A split second later, she realised. Guests! How could she have been so dense? 

“Annie! Summon my maids at once. My chamber, now. Oh, how am I supposed to greet anyone looking like a farmhouse slut after a rainstorm? Annie! Stop dawdling – we’ve not a moment to lose.” 

* * *

The fair was all she had hoped. On the grassy slopes on the far side of the river the pavilions of the worthies rose in ranks of silk-trimmed canvas. Their fires at night were secondary constellations, glowing through the dusk. (The Castellan, prosaic and sour, observed, “Last time I saw a sight like that from a rampart, we were down to boiling rats for soup before the relief force got through.”) 

The less worthy found shelter where they could. Annie, matter-of-factly explaining the swish and splash of buckets in the early morning, told her many simply passed out in doorways or building corners when the night’s ale proved too much. A dawn clean-up detail from the army camp woke them before any in the castle or the tented village were stirring, so no harm done. 

The traders’ booths spiralled down, almost from the castle’s gates, following the single street until they engulfed even the lower parts of the village, beyond _The Mariner’s Rest_ , where respectable people did not venture. 

All the castle party succumbed to the general air of licence. Chris and Ray took to whispering in corners and giggling. Annie and Phyllis appeared in finery saved up against such a festival. Charis even surprised the castle librarian, whom she’d never seen out-of-doors before, returning from the fair early on the first day. 

“Have you been shopping? What have the traders brought in? Is there anyone selling Chinese silks with dragons woven in? Or ginger in syrup?” 

“Not shopping, no, ma’am.” He brushed across his forehead with the back of his hand. “My old eyes become weary these days. I’d heard an oculist had set up his booth. I went to see if he might mix me a soothing eye-wash.” 

Charis bristled. How dare some peripatetic quack muscle in on her territory? Though, true, optics were a specialist branch, and one she’d had little experience of… 

“Might I see?” 

He produced a little stoppered bottle. She uncorked it and took a deep sniff. Rue and witch hazel, admirably sharp and defined, no hint of mildew and a good, scholar’s hand on the label. 

She nodded her approval, handed it back and the librarian passed on through the archway into the castle. 

She’d worried about presiding over the truce court. In fact, it proved simplicity itself. Flanked by the Castellan and Lord Lestrade (her thoughts lingered on his name, as if savouring a morsel), guided by their experience, she sent the petitioners away satisfied. 

Still, the end of each day left her wondering if she should demand to go deeper, or whether they would laugh at her as an overconscientious novice, making too much of trifles. 

Her co-judges rattled through a heavy caseload with admirable dispatch, true. They knew the lands and the people far better that she could, no doubt. No-one complained (who would dare?). 

But –

Take that case about whether a dispute between local families had been cattle-rustling or a misunderstanding over when a particular instalment of a dowry became due. Odd that the bride had not looked to her husband when giving evidence, as was her wifely duty, or to her father, as habit might have dictated, but away, into the crowd, as if looking for some other guidance. Sherlock would have been bound to have known what to say, to shock her into an admission. But maybe she had nothing to admit. Lord Lestrade, coming down decisively on the dowry misunderstanding side of the argument, had seen nothing amiss, nor had the Castellan. She must be wrong. 

On the final day of the truce, the horse races were held. Before dawn Charis and Annie rode down to inspect the course. Fortunately, Charis’s waiting gentlewoman had bunions, which made her unequal to the exercise. 

The race stewards had done well. The ropes and pennants defined a fast, tricky circuit of thin soil, good turf and, so early in the year, excellent going. The startline was on the water-meadows. The course tracked along the firebreak which split the wooded slopes below the village, over the Royal highway and made a hard right turn on the far side of the army camp, finishing in a glorious straight just in front of the President’s box and the grandees’ stand. 

Charis and Annie left their horses in the care of one of the grooms and set off on foot, the second groom trailing a decorous ten paces behind. So early in the day, the dew had yet to burn off the grass. The sky had a pearly sheen which betokened heat later. Too soon to tell if it would turn thunderous. 

They had completed the circuit and returned to the water-meadows when a small knot of men emerged from the rushes. No-one could mistake their leader, his hair damp and tousled, his shirt negligently unlaced and hanging out of breeches which clung to damp, shapely legs even more tightly than their tailor had intended. 

“Oh, there’s a shame, ma’am. Five minutes earlier and that _would_ have been a sight for sore eyes.” 

“Annie, be silent!” The order came out with all the self-righteousness of one who’d thought exactly the same, but at least had the grace not to utter it. From Annie’s barely suppressed grin, she’d taken it in exactly that spirit. 

Charis raised her voice. “Good morning to you, Lord Lestrade. I trust you found your dip refreshing?” 

She swept down in her lowest and most elaborate curtsey. When she lifted her gaze, it was to meet a mischievous sparkle in Lord Lestrade’s dark eyes. 

“Milady, I find _everything_ about this morning refreshing. Indeed, it improves with each passing minute…My friends and I were just setting out to walk the course. Might I prevail – too much to ask, I know – but might I have the honour of your company?” 

The invitation caught her between extremes of delight and terror. Did he truly desire her company or was his invitation merely a thing of form, humouring the child he perhaps still thought her? Would accepting brand her a wanton in the eyes of Lord Lestrade and his companions? Would they talk about her that night in their cups, and laugh, in that way men did, like _that_? 

What on earth was she supposed to _say_? 

The training of years came to her aid. She paused for one carefully judged, artless second. 

“My lord, what a fortunate chance. My companion and I came down from the castle with that very intention. But we’d not hoped to have the company of such a renowned horseman. Are you racing yourself?” 

He smiled; it set her heart thumping. “I am, milady. It’s not the fashion in Gaaldine or Angria, but I’d scorn to leave the post of danger to some half-starved gypsy lad. What honour can there be in a trophy won by proxy?” 

As if the thought had only just occurred, he added, “Of course, milady, it might be the prejudice of youth speaking. No doubt when thirty is well past, and forty begins to appear on the horizon – if I last so long – I’ll be more than happy to let a jockey risk his neck on my behalf. But, until then, the honours I lay at my love’s feet will be those I’ve fairly won.” 

“Your love?” She pursed her lips as she had seen the Court beauties do, when they conversed with Papa. “The Border winds whisper strange tales about you, Lord Lestrade. They would have it your fancy shifts like an opal, as the sun turns.” 

“Milady, I – the Border breezes wrong me. You know the wild-cat of the high forests? The more the shadows shift, the better he may stalk concealed. And, once he fixes on his object, not death itself can shake him from pursuit.” He dropped his voice, so she had to strain to hear. “ _You_ of all people should not impugn my constant heart, milady.” 

The blood roared in her ears. She could hardly breathe. Her voice sounded as if from a long way away. 

“Well then, my lord, should we proceed?” 

She hooked her arm around his, ignoring Annie’s barely suppressed snort. Together, they paced down the course. 

They were half-way along the firebreak when Phyllis’s messenger, red-faced and agitated, caught up with them. And that, of course, changed everything.


	3. Chapter 3

“Chris, how _could_ you?” 

Apparently the shock of having his liege lady address him by his first name got through where all previous attempts had failed. He half sat up, stared at her muzzily, said in a tone of profound horror, “Oh, no!” and flopped back on the pillow. Using the minimum possible number of movements he turned onto his side and vomited feebly into the bucket placed there. He flopped back onto his back and closed his eyes again. 

Charis looked across his supine body at Phyllis. With a minute crooking of her forefinger, she indicated she should join her in the passage outside. They found a convenient window embrasure, soaked with early sun. Just the place for a lady and her trusted servant to loiter, while the castle came to life around them. 

“So. Now. Tell me everything. Make sure I’ve understood.” 

Everything came gushing forth, as if she’d pumped a pump handle. 

Two minutes into it Charis blessed Sherlock’s training at keeping a convoluted story straight in one’s head. Five minutes in, she wished he was hearing this, not her. She raised an arresting hand. 

“Stop! Blessed Virgin, I don’t need you to drown me in excuses. Just tell me I’ve got the facts straight. You – you all – bet _your entire wages_ on the outcome of a _horse-race_? With _Chris_ riding?” 

Her voice went up in a disbelieving shriek; she clapped her hand over her mouth lest anyone hear. Fortunately, they were all about their business downstairs. 

“Not the whole race, ma’am. Just a side bet.” Phyllis sounded as if she was clinging to sanity by a thread. 

In a flash of insight Charis saw how it must have been. Annie and Phyllis protesting the idiocy of the scheme; Ray and Chris bearing them down with that concentrated refusal to listen to objections which men seemed to find so much more effective than logical argument. Ray and Chris, flushed with enthusiasm, betting far more than they’d been given leave to hazard. Now all four of them were in the soup and Phyllis forced to intercede for them with Charis, without even the relief of an _I told you so_ , at least in public. 

And Phyllis’s messenger had snatched her away from walking the course, from Lord Lestrade’s entrancing presence, for this! As if she hadn’t got enough to think about, without people descending on her, demanding things, behaving as if she were somehow _responsible_ for them, as if sorting out their petty little problems was somehow _her job_ , as if –

As if, in short, she was the President of the truce, senior landowner to the North of the Border, lady to the Warden of the Border Marches and Queen of Gondal. 

Charis bit out her next words with precise fury. 

“So. Not an entire horse race. Not defeating the cream of _every_ stables in the Borders. I suppose I should be relieved at the modesty of your ambitions. But defeating Colonel Ross’s white-striped bay? A side bet? Have any of you seen that horse gallop?” 

From the strain around Phyllis’s mouth, the sense of a torrent of words kept back, Charis suspected she had not merely seen Colonel Ross’s white-striped bay perform, but had expressed herself forcibly on the topic. 

Charis drew a deep breath. 

“And did it not occur to Chris, once the bet was placed, that he shouldn’t have been drinking with _anyone_ , let alone Colonel Ross’s men?” 

“He couldn’t have known –” 

“He could have had wit enough to guess.” Time was running short. Her mind flicked to her accounts rolls – she could cover the losses, if worst came to worst, but it would take a nasty bite out of this quarter’s domestic appropriations, even if Phyllis had told her the full extent of their exposure, which she’d lay her own odds she hadn’t, and she was _damned_ if she was going to petition Mycroft for an advance from her dower coffers in such a cause. Besides, this was a sporting wager – not just money, but honour in the balance and she’d sat through enough cases in the truce court by now to know just what affronted honour led to, in the Borders –

“Can anyone else take the ride?” 

Phyllis shook her head, but her expression belied the gesture. Charis decoded it with ease. She made an exasperated noise. 

“You cannot possibly be serious.” 

“Who else could do it? Ma’am. You’ve been riding Thunderhead every day for the last fortnight –” 

“Who told you?” 

The Castellan’s haphazard custodianship had confined Charis’s official rides to promenades on a palfrey so placid it was practically stunned, or, at best, to short canters on the Creature. The Castellan, though, could not be everywhere, especially since his injury. Someone had to exercise his charger. Masters of the castle horse, likewise, had to live, especially when (as Annie helpfully hinted) they were supporting two families, an official one in the grace-and-favour next to the stable block and an unofficial lady in the next village down the valley. 

Charis would never love Thunderhead the way she loved the Creature, but those surreptitious dawn gallops had given her a sense of kinship with the powerful black stallion with the lightning-flash blaze. He, too, was trapped in an unchanging valley, with few opportunities to show his quality. 

Phyllis delivered herself of a pointed sniff. “Someone in the castle needed to know, in case we’ve a broken neck to account for one of these mornings. But since you know the horse, and ride a good ten pounds less than Chris –” 

“Fifteen at a minimum!” 

“Thought that might fetch you, ma’am. Aye. Well. Could be. As I was saying, since you know the horse –” 

“I’m supposed to be _watching_ the race. To say nothing of handing out the prizes afterwards. How am I supposed to be in two places at once?” 

Phyllis’s face relaxed. Belatedly Charis realised that in moving to “how?” she had conceded vital ground on “whether?” 

“Ma’am, you’re the Crown Princess. No-one has the right to tell you _where_ you should be – well, save for two people, maybe, and they aren’t here, thank all the saints. You don’t have to give any excuse for not attending the races – you’re honouring them, not the other way round – but if you choose to let it be known you’ve had urgent dispatches from Court that require your attention, then who’s going to challenge you?” 

“The Castellan –” 

Phyllis gave an eloquent snort. “You hardly think, ma’am, we’d have aimed to race his horse in the festival if we hadn’t already had a plan for the Castellan?” 

Charis blinked, and concluded that if rank had _any_ privileges, they assuredly included not having to delve any deeper into the implications of that remark. She returned to more pressing issues. 

“Anyway, I can’t go making an exhibition of myself in the face of all the Borders. Think of the scandal!” 

Phyllis got to her feet. “Follow me – that is, if you would be so good, ma’am.” 

Stealing out of the castle turned out to be easy, once Phyllis had draped her in a rusty black robe of homespun wool, the kind of thing up-country grandmothers wore to muck out the goats or bring water from the spring. Wearing it was like having a cloak of invisibility. Something to remember. 

She had not expected them to go as far as the _Mariners’ Rest_ – for a moment she even feared they would go past, into the wilds of the lower town. Phyllis’s knock must be known; the tavern’s door opened and they passed into an alien world. 

Even Charis had to stoop to avoid banging her head on the lintel. The maid who had let them in vanished into the back of the inn. Phyllis plonked herself down on a stool, with an air of expectancy. Charis, too much on edge to sit, wandered around the room. 

The air reeked of tallow and stale tobacco smoke. It was sharp with asafoetida and a hint of myrrh. A shark’s white-bleached jaws hung above the bar counter, forever agape in a jagged grin. A moulded bronze head – full-lipped, long nosed and surmounted by a many-layered tiara – surveyed her from a stand in the corner. The weary detachment in its wide-spaced eyes transcended time and distance. She had seen it in her father’s face and in her brother Mycroft’s. Even without the crown, Charis would have known it as a royal portrait. 

She crossed the room to inspect a stuffed bird above the fireplace and instead found her hand exploring a deep, time-smoothed notch in the black oak mantel-shelf. 

“Now that’s a funny thing I’ve seen since I’ve been here. Whoever comes in here, whatever else I give them to look at, they always go to that.” 

The rich, relaxed voice came from out of the gloom behind her. Booted feet crossed the bar parlour, ringing loud on the flagstones. With a great effort, Charis prevented herself from turning round. 

“Who did it?” 

“Self-evidently, a short man in a very bad mood. More than that, I cannot say.” 

At that, she did turn round. The tavern-owner – he could be no-one else – stood smiling at her. 

Any thought of standing on her dignity melted like butter on a griddle. She would sooner have pulled rank with her confessor. Indeed, the tavern-keeper’s very presence gave her that sense of a burden being lifted that came after a good confession, the sort one dreaded for days. 

“Horatio,” the tavern-keeper added helpfully. “And you, of course, will be –” 

“No names,” Phyllis rapped out. “Not here.” 

He nodded. “No problem. In any event, I was only going to say, ‘And you, of course, will be Thunderhead’s new rider’.” He paused for a second. “A better choice than Chris, at that.” 

“As far as seat and nous goes, certainly.” Phyllis’s sour expression made the compliment all the sweeter. Her next words brought Charis back to earth. 

“As for the rest – well, she’s got to pass close up, as well as in a crowd, and if she gets unmasked – well, that’s a rough bunch out there, and they aren’t conspicuous for being broad-minded.” 

Horatio raised an eyebrow. “You sure? This is the Borders. All can be taken in stride, if you just sing it to the right tune.” 

Phyllis snorted. “Then I suggest you find us a bloody good musician.” 

“Again, no problem. The town is full of them at present.” His face crinkled in a smile. “As you know very well, my friend. _How_ much did you pay that fiddler to give us _The King and the Widow from England_ yesterday?” 

“Ssh.” The look Phyllis shot in her direction might have been evidence of guilt, if Charis had thought her capable of it. “What happens at the fair stays at the fair. At least, if I’ve got anything to do with it. So, Horatio, what do you reckon?” 

He looked her up and down, with the cool, dispassionate scrutiny of a fencing master or a dressmaker. 

“A wise man told me recently, ‘the most convincing lies are those a man tells himself’. It’s not what you look like that will matter; it’s who the crowd will think you are. Come with me.”


	4. Chapter 4

Charis had never felt so sick in her entire life. _Nothing_ had prepared her for the noise, the stink, the press of bodies around her, the sheer pandemonium of the course. Truly, one saw _nothing_ from the cool isolation of the Royal Box. (Up in those lofty heights Lady Backwater, the notorious second wife of one of the biggest landowners in the district, was making the most of her unexpected promotion. As they passed below, Charis saw her lean right across Colonel Wardlaw, giving him the full benefit of her ample assets. Momentarily distracted from her churning guts, Charis hoped the commander of her husband’s regiments knew stinking fish when he smelt it. There _was_ mercury in the castle inventory, but she could think of few things worse than being called upon to prescribe it in such a case.) 

She followed at Horatio’s boot-heels down the course, barely resisting the temptation to cling to his coat, relying on his sharp elbows and ready wit to force a way through the throng. 

Mercifully, no-one in the crowd paid the slightest attention to her. Barefoot boys in hand-me-down jackets and breeches were everywhere. With walnut juice rubbed into every inch of exposed skin and a hot, itchy black wig concealing her own light hair, there was nothing to distinguish her from the rest of the locals. 

Ray and a greenish-looking Chris were ahead of them at the paddock, hanging like grim death onto the reins of a black horse. It snorted and jittered, lashing out with powerful hooves, ears back and lather already starting around the bit. 

The horse had not a white hair on its body. Charis plucked urgently at Horatio’s jacket sleeve. 

“But that’s not –” 

He turned to her and raised his finger to his lips. “Hush, _mon brave_. You of all people ought not to let appearances blind you to what lies underneath.” 

A few paces ahead a tall man, wearing an absurd, overlong frock-coat despite the heat, stopped dead and turned to scrutinise them. Charis’s knees shook. However, after an endless moment, he raised his fiddle to his shoulder, nodded in salute to Horatio and wandered off into the throng, playing pizzicato. The strains of his song drifted back to them: 

“ _The word runs on the mountainside/The word runs on the strand  
Our Lord the King has given his heart /To a widow from Eng-er-land_ ” 

The smothering blanket of fear lifted, just a little. Oh, to see Mycroft’s face, if he could hear his affairs summed up in bawdy song on a provincial race-course! The thought sustained her through Ray and Chris’s last-minute, mutually contradictory tactical advice, which stirred up nerves and temper in equal measure. It sustained her as they wound a gaudy, stifling cloth around her neck and lower face. (Most of the riders had done the same, a precaution against divots and dust; it would not immediately mark her as someone in disguise.) It sustained her through being boosted aboard Thunderhead, who tossed his head, danced sideways and did everything short of dumping her ignominiously on the paddock turf. 

Then she and Thunderhead were on their own, cantering down towards the mill on the start line. Still the tune rang in her head, a fine-spun thread linking her to a world a thousand miles away from this alien mass of heat and terror and turmoil. 

A thread to cling on to. 

* * *

“ _CHRIST!_ The bastard – the lousy cheating bastard!” “It’s fine, she’s still up – oh, God, he’s barging in again– Yessss! Smack in his cheating face.” “ _Excellent_ use of the whip, my friend.” “I can’t look.” “Well don’t. And don’t try to sit up, or you’ll be sick again.” “Come _ON_! Come _ON_ – only ten lengths more – ”  
“There’s Colonel Ross in the box – just look at his face – he knows his man’s shot his bolt –” “ _Holy Virgin_ – watch out, on the outside – ” “Christ, girl, don’t let that smarmy prick steal your race – NO! Don’t turn your head, just go for the line – Oh, shit.” 

A trumpet sounded. The remainder of the field trailed across the finish line. Volunteers poured onto the course to round up the remaining loose horses. The one that had fallen in the firebreak stretch had already been despatched. 

On the poles above the Royal Box, jerkily, the banners went up. On the lowest of the three poles, Colonel’s Ross’s black and red, on the far side, a fraction higher, their own yellow-and-black stripes, but in the centre, fluttering out in the post of honour –

 _Sabaton gules, field: chequy sable and argent._

* * *

No-one had told her how she would feel, after. 

In the spirit of the moment, saying “yes” had been the easy course. It required less thought than saying “no”. 

These were her people. If there was one point on which Papa and John and Sherlock and all the romances she had ever pored over in every library she had ever entered in the whole of her short life were agreed on, it was that a knight stayed true to his people, come what may. 

To the lasting disappointment of everyone she had ever known, she was not, and never would be, a knight. Nonetheless, she would live or die by the knightly principle. She would defend her people, and her people’s honour. 

But no-one had told her how she would feel, after. 

At the end of the race she had dropped, bonelessly, from Thunderhead’s back into the arms of someone she only belatedly recognised as Horatio. He half-carried, half-propelled her up the hill, away from the course, into the _Mariner’s Rest_. There, in a back room, she sponged off the worst of the grime and walnut juice. She dropped borrowed jacket and breeches into a heap, lest they be recognised, wrapped herself once more in the respectable rust-black robes, and slipped through a side door into the street. 

The day’s heat reflected back from stone walls and cobbles. The declining sun slanted long shadows across the near-deserted streets of the upper village. 

Down the slope the course would still be thronged, bets would be being paid up, the starters for the next race called. Up at the castle, the evening’s banquet would be being prepared. 

Caught between two worlds, she walked in blessed, unfamiliar solitude. 

If anyone had been there to hear, she could have talked of the race until the sun set, and rose, and set again. In her head, she went over it stride by stride – the fear and the glory, the pride, the anger, the queer, twisted satisfaction as her slash with the whip had found its mark and – at the very last – fury at her own idiotic mistake. 

For she really had only herself to blame. If only she had trusted her instincts, trusted Thunderhead, ignored the pounding hooves behind her and driven single-mindedly for the line. 

It seemed hardly likely she would have another chance to race equal with men ( _and such men, too_ ) and it would be a lifetime’s regret that she would only be able to think, “I raced and nearly won” rather than “I left them to eat my dust.” 

The musician in the absurd frock coat was sitting on the steps of the stone cheese-market but his eyes were turned inward in his head, like those of a man who had taken _kif_ , and he was oblivious to anything except his own thoughts. From the way his lips moved and he plucked out occasional phrases on the strings he must be composing something new. 

Annie and Phyllis waited by the sally port, bubbling with suppressed giggles. They set her off, too. Not since she left her schoolfellows at the convent had she felt the same delicious sense of belonging. Together, arm in arm, distinctions of rank momentarily overlooked, they stole into the still-deserted castle.


	5. Chapter 5

“The gentlemen beg leave to rejoin the party, if it please you, ma’am.” 

The sound of the withdrawing room door creaking open was a symphony composed by St Cecelia herself. Joy swept over Charis; release at last from Lady Backwater’s coarse preening over her lovers and Lady Desborough’s interminable recital of her children’s excellences. Lord Lestrade, entering first among the gentlemen, caught the full benefit. His face altered. Abruptly, he turned his head aside like a man emerging from a dark door into sunlight too bright for him to endure. Giving her only a sketch of a bow, barely enough for gentility’s sake, he blundered past and sank into the window-seat, waving away the servitor’s offer of refreshment. 

She gasped. Then, as Colonels Ross and Wardlaw entered side by side as befitted the two military men of the gathering, the spirit of Mischief or of her more reputable cousin, Inspiration, infected her. 

She dropped into a low curtsey before the two colonels. As she rose, she nodded to Colonel Ross. 

“My commiserations on this afternoon’s defeat; it must be bitter indeed. My household told me your white-striped bay was reputed all but invincible.” 

Discipline put fetters on the colonel’s tongue, though it was plain from his face the shaft had gone home. She thought of Chris’s distress – if Colonel Ross had been ignorant of his grooms’ chicanery, then shame on him for an inattentive master! – and twisted the weapon with a sure hand. 

“Of course, on this side of the Border, they had not have had the opportunity to see Lord Lestrade ride, and would not heed my tales from Gondal’s court. If you must lose, colonel, no shame to lose to his lordship. My father, the king, himself, often said that a horseman of Lord Lestrade’s calibre arises but once or twice in a generation.” 

Out of the tail of her eye she caught a stir from the direction of the window-seat. 

Colonel Ross, his Borders accent becoming more marked by the second, his speech punctuated by little, angry jerks of his chin, rapped out, “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than a _fair_ race between my horse and Lord Lestrade’s Bayard.” 

Booted feet hit the flagged floor. 

“ _What_ did you say?” 

Charis spun, to see Lord Lestrade already on his feet in the window embrasure. As for the look on his face – Holy Virgin! Not even on the race start line had terror and exhilaration so warred within her. 

“The Widowmaker.” She had boasted of his nickname to Frances, the day they met. She blushed for the callow girl of half a year ago, repeating like an infant or a parrot a phrase heard but not – until this instant – understood. 

All the men were disarmed, as custom demanded, but Charis sneaked a glance at the archaic war trophies pinned to the walls, and prayed their fixings were sound. 

Colonel Ross signalled the servitor to refill his brandy glass. It took three attempts. He raised it in an abbreviated salute to Lord Lestrade. 

“Let be, lad; I’m a fowl too old and scrawny to be worth your skewering.” 

Charis had never realised, before, that high courage might come wrapped in a fussy, dapper little package, with a shiny, bald head and an uptilted white moustache. 

Charis saw Lord Lestrade’s knuckles clenched white with strain. “I’ll know your meaning, sir. Are you asserting I did not race fair?” 

“You, my lord? No.” 

“Then what do you mean to imply, sir?” The edge of Lord Lestrade’s rage had blunted; his tone showed it. 

Lady Backwater dropped, disappointed, to a sopha. Lady Desborough raised her handkerchief to her lips and let out a feeble giggle. 

“Imply?” Colonel Ross shook his head. “Did you not see my man brutally served by that gypsy lad on Rasper?” 

For a moment, Charis was baffled. Then hot shame, mixed with indignation, overcame her. Fortunately, the company were too focussed on the little bantam-cock colonel to notice. 

“Slashed with the whip, right across his face. Without that coward’s trick, my lord, I warrant he would have fought you hard for –” 

Charis, her face crimson, made rather a business of moving to Annie, standing immobile againt the wall, and giving unnecessary instructions about sweetmeats. Everyone ignored her. 

Lady Backwater oozed across to Colonel Ross. 

“Deprived of victory, and by a perfidious gypsy? Oh, sir, I do feel for you – and yet, what a daring lad, and such a fighter! Oh, la! I only wish I’d met him.” 

“I wish I’d met the owner.” The Castellan puffed unbecomingly up the stairs into the withdrawing chamber and flopped, heavily and without apology into the chair that had been made ready for him. “I’d be tempted to make him an offer. I’d not thought there was a horse in the Borders who was the equal of my Thunderhead – present company excepted – yet this Rasper could have been out of the same dam.” 

Charis avoided meeting Annie’s eye. 

“Who is the owner?” Colonel Ross demanded. “I’m minded to send him my compliments and ask him if he proposes to defend his rider’s blackguardry.” 

Charis’s heart skipped a beat. She felt a soft tug on her sleeve and turned to find Annie, who whispered in her ear. Charis turned back to the assembled guests. 

“I am informed the dancing is about to begin. Shall we repair below?” 

Lord Lestrade strode across the room. “My lady? Might I claim the honour of opening the ball with you? Truly, I would set all today’s laurels – _however_ won – as blades of grass besides that favour.” 

Charis’s heart missed a beat, and started thudding erratically. Could he have penetrated her secret? The way he had stressed the word “however” hinted as much. And, truly, when she had turned her head to look, perhaps her facecovering _had_ slipped –

If so, he gave no other sign of it. She descended the wide, shallow staircase on his arm. Trumpeters on either side announced the arrival of the castle party in the state ballroom. 

Under cover of the noise Lord Lestrade leaned in a little and said, very low,  
“You have grown up a great deal in these last years, milady. I had – in truth, I had not expected to find in you what I have. And that which I have found – Good God, to think we let the greatest jewel in all Gondal pass out of our keeping and into our enemy’s stronghold.” 

“Stronghold?” She felt possessed; giddy with the exhilaration of the day, with the wine she had drunk at dinner, with the danger which she had felt above, in the withdrawing room, when Lord Lestrade had all but challenged Colonel Ross. “But, my lord, I am chatelaine here. _I_ keep the keys – none other.” 

“Ah!” Lord Lestrade’s sigh almost sounded like a gasp. “My lady, I depart tomorrow. As matters stand, who knows when we may meet again. I would pay my farewells to you – if farewells they must be – as friend to friend, not chilled by the cold breath of diplomacy and the guard of publicity. If you would come to the village church, a whit after Terce, come alone and I will speak the thoughts of my heart to you.” 

Her mind reeled. All her training, all her instincts, told her she was stepping onto quicksand. Women of equal rank had been incarcerated for life for less than that. But if it were only to say farewell… 

Distantly, amid the press, she glimpsed Lady Backwater, her face alight with calculation. How _dare_ that woman’s coarse imagination reduce all that was beautiful, pure and sacred to her own base coinage? She’d _show_ her how wrong she was. 

Charis swung back to Lord Lestrade. “Yes, my lord. I shall come.” 

* * *

She reached her room, footweary from the dancing, head ringing with the music, guts churning with rich food and excitement. There, on the very centre of her pillow, rested a single red rose, its stem wrapped in the gold chain awarded to the owner of the winning horse. 

Beneath it lay a scrap of paper, inscribed in an unmistakeable hand. 

_My lady. Until the seas dry and the mountains fall._

**Author's Note:**

> Downloadable ebook version available [ here ](http://ajhall.shoesforindustry.net/). Thanks to Russ at shoesforindustry.net for all technical and design support.


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